I’ve posted a batch of autographed, hardback editions of A Planet of Viruses in my Amazon store. You can have your own inscribed copy for ten dollars plus shipping. Click here to order.

For those unfamiliar with the book: it’s a linked collection of twelve essays on twelve viruses. I use each one to illustrate a broad lesson about viruses in general, such as the fact that they are the most abundant life form on Earth and that they make up a sizable portion of the human genome.

The Washington Post wrote: “In A Planet of Viruses, science writer Carl Zimmer accomplishes in a mere 100 pages what other authors struggle to do in 500: He reshapes our understanding of the hidden realities at the core of everyday existence.”

Thanks to everyone who has been taking my extra books off my hands in advance of a summer of house-gutting. If you’ve been holding out, or if you’ve been thinking about getting another book, your moment has come. Apparently, some brain-infecting parasite has taken such a grievous toll on my Economic Cortex that I now find myself offering you this final, ridiculous sale to end all sales. All the remaining autographed hardback books in my Amazon store are now ten dollars. All autographed paperback books are five dollars.

Let me break it down for you. Click on the links below to order your copies:

Thanks to everyone who scooped up autographed copies of At the Water’s Edge (72 are out the door as of this writing, and 8 are left). My shelves are getting close to being purged of author’s copies–which is good, since those shelves are about to come crashing down for some home renovation.

To keep the momentum going, let me offer to you autographed copies of a book I wrote about the origin of neurology in the wild, woolly days of the scientific revolution: Soul Made Flesh. It’s a group biography of a seventeenth-century band of big thinkers who put the brain–which was considered by many to be little more than a lump of phlegm–at the center of our existence. At the hub of this circle of virtuosi was the English physician Thomas Wills, a man who’s wrongly sunk into oblivion. The story is rich with intrigue, warfare, religious strife, and gorey blood transfusions. (Here’s a page with more information about the book at my web site.)

Oliver Sacks switched on my orbitofrontal cortex with a happy glow when he had this to say about the book:

“Thomas Willis was the first man to come to grips with the human brain, to see how different parts of it had different functions, and how the human soul could be embodied in it. In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer gives a remarkable, beautiful account of England’s ‘genius century,’ and of the intertwined lives of Willis and his contemporaries, Harvey, Boyle, and Hooke. Zimmer brings Willis and his intellectual journey to life–his prose, as always, is clear, vivid, and arresting–and reminds us how startling and revolutionary his discoveries were.”

I’ve got both paperback and hardback copies of the American and British editions on offer at my Amazon store. The only difference to speak of is the covers. All told, I’ve got 54 copies here for you. Both US and UK hardbacks are yours for $15, and both US and UK paperbacks are yours for $8. Below are the links to each kind–if you find that I’m sold of out of one edition, try another!

Having just returned from a ten-day family reunion road trip, I discovered a surprise in our attic: several extra boxes of my first book, At the Water’s Edge. You may recall that I put a bunch of autographed copies of this book on sale in my Amazon store to clear them out in advance of my office getting ripped apart. Well, the ripping-apart is now just days away, and now I have eighty more copies to get out of this house. (This photo shows just a selection.)

So–help! For the next week, you can get an autographed copy for six bucks. Order it here.

“What?” you say. “Someone get this man to a hospital. The tail pipe of his station wagon must have been inserted directly into his nostrils for his entire road trip, robbing him of all common sense!” Well, my carbon monoxide poisoning is your good fortune–get your copy now. The sledgehammers are breaking through very soon.

If you haven’t heard about the book, it’s about how major transitions in evolution take place–and how scientists reconstruct them. Publishers Weekly called it “an entertaining history of ideas written with literary flair and technical rigor.” More details are here. Check it out, then clear me out. Thanks!

Thanks to all the Loominaries who have taken extra copies of my books off my hands–or, to be more specific, off my shelves. On Friday, I offered autographed copies of the US hardback edition of Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, and you cleaned me out in a few hours. Here is a picture of what I’ve got to offer today: two other editions of Evolution. If you’d like one of these books autographed and shipped to you, go to my Amazon store and order a copy.

To the left are 11 copies of the original paperback edition of Evolution. They have the same lavish color illustrations inside as in the original hardback edition. (They’re not in print anymore; the paperback edition you’ll find in stores now contains straight text–an unfortunate matter of publishing economics.) This week, I’ll be offering autographed copies for $15. You can order a copy here.

To the right are 7 copies of the UK hardback edition. The only difference between them and the original US edition is that they have a cute mother-and-child iguana portrait on the front, instead of the original array of eerie eyes. For this week, you can order an autographed copy for $20 by going here.

(I had a few cries of woe from people in India and Sweden who say they can’t order books through Amazon’s pesonal stores. I pondered setting up an alternate system, but I’m just too swamped with work and preparations for vacation to make it work. My apologies.)

Update, 8 pm: Thanks for turning the picture above into the picture below! I’ve still got a couple more shelves to clear, though, so stay tuned for more sales.

In the continuing quest to avoid packing boxes before our house gets ripped open for renovations this summer, allow me to offer you–for one week only!–another sale. I’ve got 33 autographed copies of the first US hardback edition of Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, which are available for $20. (The cover price is $40, and this particular edition has been out of print for some time now.)

This book was a companion to a series that aired in 2001 on PBS. But it’s not a nonfiction novelization of the show. In fact, the show hadn’t even been shot when I started working on the book a year earlier. Instead, I wrote a stand-alone introduction to the history of evolutionary biology and to its many avenues, from sex to mass extinctions to the rise of our species. The publishers packed the large-format book with photographs and color artwork. “Zimmer writes in a gloriously clear and lively style,” wrote a reviewer for Scientific American. “His coverage is as thorough as it is graceful. This is as fine a book as one will find on the subject.”

If this sale is like the previous ones, the books are going to move fast, so I apologize in advance to any disappointed shoppers. But remember: you can still find other autographed books in my Amazon store.

Update, 6 pm: All gone! Thanks again. I’ll start another sale on Monday. (I got some cries of woe from people abroad who can’t get Amazon to ship to them. So I may start the sale with a non-US pre-sale…)

Again, here’s a quick description of Microcosm: In the book, I tilt at one of my favorite windmills–the definition of life. But rather than try to take on all of life on Earth, I chose one species–the one that we know best of all. That would be our gastrointestinal lodger, Escherichia coli, the little bug that helped build modern biology and launch the entire biotechnology industry. In my biography of this scrutinized germ, I explore the origin of life, our inner ecology, and the search for life on other planets. You can find out more about the book on at carlzimmer.com, or check out this review from Anthony Doerr in the Boston Globe, in which he calls it “quietly revolutionary.”

As I wrote on Monday, we’re boxing up books in preparation for some house renovations. You were kind enough to take 21 autographed paperback copies of At the Water’s Edgeoffour hands–in about three hours.

In Microcosm, I tilt at one of my favorite windmills: the definition of life. But rather than try to take on all of life on Earth, I chose one species–the one that we know best of all. That would be our gastrointestinal lodger, Escherichia coli, the little bug that helped build modern biology and launch the entire biotechnology industry. In my biography of this scrutinized germ, I explore the origin of life, our inner ecology, and the search for life on other planets. You can find out more about the book on at carlzimmer.com, or check out this review from Anthony Doerr in the Boston Globe, in which he calls it “quietly revolutionary.”

The Zimmer clan is preparing for some renovations to the house, which means boxing up all my books. We’ve got a particularly tall stack of copies of my first book, At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales With Legs, and How Life Came Ashore and Went Back to the Sea. We’d rather sell these books than pack them. And so, from today till Friday, I’ll be offering autographed copies at my Amazon store for the low, low price of $5. (Imagine me shouting all this, Crazy-Eddie style.)

If you’re not familiar with the book, you can check out its carlzimmer.com page or check out this review in Times Higher Education, in which the reviewer writes, “It is wicked, I know, but I have the habit of turning over the corners of pages whenever I chance upon something unexpectedly interesting, exciting or informative. Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge quickly became the most dog-eared book on my shelves.”

Update 5/16 9:50 am: Whoa! I put this post up this morning before I caught at cab to LAX. By the time I got through security at the airport, all the sale copies were sold out. Many thanks for helping us with our home renovation!

I’ll be back home on Thursday, at which point, we’ll see whether we can’t clear some more space. In the meantime, you can still check out other autographed titles in my Amazon store.

Who We Are

Phenomena is a gathering of spirited science writers who take delight in the new, the strange, the beautiful and awe-inspiring details of our world. Phenomena is hosted by National Geographic magazine, which invites you to join the conversation. Follow on Twitter at @natgeoscience.

Ed Yong is an award-winning British science writer. Not Exactly Rocket Science is his hub for talking about the awe-inspiring, beautiful and quirky world of science to as many people as possible.
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